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Serval wanted to snap at him. To refute that his female was still better, he just refused to put her in danger. It didn’t matter how strong or capable Hela was, she was still on her own in the middle of a dark market. That was dangerous for anyone.
“Come on,” Korvii said, gesturing with his head. “We’ll meet up with Hela and see if we can’t find our way inside.”
Serval hesitated only a moment more before following after. Stupid collaboration ideas aside, he was right that it would be easier in this instance to work together.
For now.
Chapter 35
Sophie
Sucking angrily on a piece of hard candy from her Earth stash, Sophie cleaned off the makeup she had just been putting on. The video was trash, the makeup was messy, her temper was riled. But she was keeping it inside. Saving it up.
She was mad at Serval. She would make sure he got every bit of it. Once he was back. And she was not going to meet him at the door, angry and crazy looking. She had to make sure that she looked good for his verbal dressing down. Just to remind him what he wasn’t getting tonight or any night until he made it up to her.
At the same time, she was worried about the jerk.
He had gone down to some tiny planetoid to go hunting around for bad guys on the alien black market. She agreed that she had no business being down there. But neither did he!
Sophie needed him to come back so she could be mad at him. He had to do it in one piece so she didn’t have to wait to nurse him back to health until she could do so.
Sophie washed her face with a special soap from Wav’aii. She could only use their cleaning products now or risk washing off her wii. The little bacteria that had colonized her body were hard working little things. She could already feel the difference in the softness of her skin, but she could also smell the difference. She didn’t need deodorant anymore. Her hair didn’t get greasy easily, and it would take a long time for it to do so.
If she used her soaps and shampoos from Earth, they would be too harsh and the wii would be washed away completely. And while she didn’t need them like the allowee did, the benefits of having them were worth the changes to her usual hygiene routine.
After cleaning and drying her face, Sophie left the privy and returned to the bridge.
From here, she could see the dwarf planet below her. She didn’t think she was in its orbit. At least, to her untrained eye, it seemed like she was too far away for that. The ship controls seemed to suggest that she was slowly trailing after it as it continued on its galactic journey – slow being a relative term, of course.
But she couldn’t really make anything out. The planet was a dusty, boring kind of brown with about half the surface covered in what appeared to be old scars from multiple meteor strikes. There was water frozen at the poles, but it was a small amount, and there was no liquid water she could see from here. There also weren’t any signs of civilization that she could recognize.
And somewhere on that dusty brown rock, her mate was cavorting around. By himself. Getting into danger.
Sophie’s jaw tightened with annoyance and anger. Aimed at herself this time.
Because, despite everything, she couldn’t even say that he was wrong. At least about one thing. She could be of no help to him on the surface. She should never step foot on that planet, and doing so would just be putting herself in danger and causing trouble for everyone.
It was frustrating to be so useless. So helpless.
Flopping into the pilot seat, she looked at the screens that she could read but only barely understood. It was like looking at a professional mathematician’s whiteboard. Sure, she understood the majority of the symbols, but what they meant combined together was gibberish. In case of emergency, she knew which buttons to push to automatically route her to an emergency outpost – which was a place set up and controlled by Coalition authorities for starships in need. They were at known locations and all subspace generators were pre-programmed to find them. Like calling an emergency line, if dialing the number automatically teleported you to a hospital with a police station in the front.
But outside of working the combots, that was all she could do.
That was all…
Sophie got to her feet again. This time, she wandered over to the storage room. Where Serval kept everything he needed for work on the surface. Including the fleet of combots – and Lucky. They were all still there, sitting in their case, waiting and charging. He hadn’t brought them because he was trying to be clandestine.
Realistically, they wouldn’t be much help to him anyway. There were so many of them. They couldn’t camouflage to the eye, they needed to be programmed to work, and they required attention if you needed to adjust that programming. The kind of attention he wouldn’t have the time or luxury to spend down there.
But she could from here.
Biting her lip, Sophie hesitated only a moment before grabbing the case.
“Come on, Lucky,” she said, heading for the landing pods. “Let’s see how lucky you really are.”
Chapter 36
Serval
